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12-08 The Guns, the Roses and the Ge
09-23 Guns N' Roses Drop 'Hard Skool
08-06 New Guns N' Roses Song
05-02 GNR Destruction is Coming?
06-06 New Guns N' Roses Album Soon?
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At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing backinto the
charts.They werenot nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynistic, and violent; theywere also funny, vulnerable,
andoccasionally sensitive, astheir breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child O' Mine," showed. While Slashand Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out
duelingguitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or theStones, Axl Rose screeched out his talesof sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city. Meanwhile,
bassistDuff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler wer ...read more
At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing backinto the
charts.They werenot nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynistic, and violent; theywere also funny, vulnerable,
andoccasionally sensitive, astheir breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child O' Mine," showed. While Slashand Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out
duelingguitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or theStones, Axl Rose screeched out his talesof sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city. Meanwhile,
bassistDuff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler were alimber rhythmsection who kept the music loose and powerful. Guns N' Roses' music
wasbasic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base;they were dark,sleazy, dirty, and honest -- everything that good hard rock and heavy
metalshould be. There was somethingrefreshing about a band that could provokeeverything from devotion to hatred, especially since both
sideswere equally right.There hadn't been a hard rock band this raw or talented in years, andthey were given added weight by Rose's
primalrage,the sound of confused, frustrated white trash vying for his piece of the pie. As the '80s became the'90s, there simply wasn'ta
moreinteresting band around, but owing to intra-band friction and the emergence of alternative rock, Rose's supportingcastgradually
disintegrated,as he spent years in seclusion.
Guns N' Roses released their first EP in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the following year, the band released itsdebut
album,Appetite forDestruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live shows, but the album didn'tstart selling until almost
a yearlater, when MTV startedplaying "Sweet Child O' Mine." Soon, both the album and single shotto number one, and Guns N' Roses became
oneof the biggest bands in the world.Their debut single, "Welcome to theJungle," was re-released and shot into the Top Ten, and "Paradise
City"followed in its footsteps. By the end of 1988,theyreleased G N' R Lies, which paired four new, acoustic-based songs (including the Top
Fivehit "Patience") with their first EP. GN' R Lies' inflammatorycloser, "One in a Million," sparked intense controversy, as Rose slipped
intomisogyny, bigotry, and pureviolence; essentially, he somehow managed todistill every form of prejudice and hatred into one five-
minutetune.
Guns N' Roses began work on the long-awaited follow-up to Appetite for Destruction at the end of 1990. In October of thatyear, the band
firedAdler,claiming that his drug dependency caused him to play poorly; he was replaced by Matt Sorum fromthe Cult. During recording, the
bandadded Dizzy Reedon keyboards. By the time the sessions were finished, the new albumhad become two new albums. After being delayed
fornearly a year, the albums UseYour Illusion I and Use Your Illusion IIwere released in September 1991. Messy but fascinating, the
albumsshowcased a more ambitious band; whilethere were stilla fair number of full-throttle guitar rockers, there were stabs at Elton John-
styleballadry, acoustic blues, horn sections,female backupsingers, ten-minute art rock epics with several different sections, and a good
number ofintrospective, soul-searching lyrics. In short, they were nowmaking art; amazingly, they were successful at it. The albums sold
verywellinitially, but while they had seemed destined to set the pace for the decade tocome, that turned out not to be the case atall.
Nirvana's Nevermind hit number one in early 1992, suddenly making Guns N' Roses -- with all of their pretensions,impressionistic
videos,models, androck star excesses -- seem very uncool. Rose handled the change by becoming a dictator,or at least a petty tyrant; his in-
concert temper tantrumsbecame legendary, even going so far as to incite a riot in Montreal.Stradlin left by the end of 1991, and with
hisdeparture the band lost its bestsongwriter; he was replaced by ex-Kills forThrills guitarist Gilby Clarke. GNR didn't fully grasp the shift
inhard rock until 1993, when they released analbum of punkcovers, The Spaghetti Incident?; it received some good reviews, but the
bandfailed to capture the reckless spirit of not onlythe originalversions, but its own Appetite for Destruction. By the middle of 1994, there
wererumors flying that GNR wereabout to break up, since Rose wanted topursue a new, more industrial direction and Slash wanted to stick
withtheir blues-inflected hard rock. The band remained in limbo for several more years,and Slash resurfaced in 1995 with the side
projectSlash'sSnakepit and an LP, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere.
Rose remained out of the spotlight, becoming a virtual recluse and doing nothing but tinkering in the studio; he also
recruitedvariousmusicians --including Dave Navarro, Tommy Stinson, and ex-Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck -- for informal jamsessions.
Remainingmembers were infuriated byRose's inclusion of childhood friend Paul Huge in the new sessions when bothStradlin and Clarke were
excludedfrom rejoining the band. And a remake ofthe Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" wasessentially the straw that broke the
camel's back,as Rose cut out some of the other members'contributions and pastedHuge over the song without consulting anyone else. By
1996, Slash wasofficially out of Guns N' Roses, leaving Rose theloneremaining survivor from the group's heyday; rumors continued to swirl,
and still no newmaterial was forthcoming, though Rosedid re-record Appetitefor Destruction with a new lineup for rehearsal purposes. The
first new originalGNR song in eight years,the industrial metal sludge of "Oh My God" finallyappeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 Arnold
Schwarzeneggerfilm End ofDays. Soon after, Geffen issued the two-disc Live Era: '87-'93.
The year 2000 brought the addition of guitarists Robin Finck (of Nine Inch Nails) and Buckethead, and 2001 was greeted withGuns N'
Roses'first livedates in nearly seven years, as the band (which consisted of Rose plus guitarists Finck andBuckethead, bassist Stinson,
formerPrimus drummer Brian"Brain" Mantia, childhood friend and guitarist Paul Huge, andlongtime GNR keyboardist Dizzy Reed) played a
show onNew Year's Eve 2000 in Las Vegas,playing as well at the mammothRock in Rio festival the following month. On New Year's Eve 2001,
theband played almost the exact same set as theyearbefore.
An appearance at MTV's 2002 Video Music Awards helped garner interest in the new lineup, but a rusty performance fromRose and
aninterview where hesaid his new album wasn't coming out anytime soon didn't do much to further their cause.That summer, GNR started
ontheir first tour in almost eightyears, and they managed to fulfill all of their commitments inEurope and Asia. Sadly, they caused a violent
anddestructive riot in Vancouver when Rosefailed to show up for the firstdate of their North American tour. While he was up to his
oldshenanigans with the retooled lineup, former StoneTemplePilots vocalist Scott Weiland, Slash, Sorum, and McKagan formed the
successfulVelvet Revolver in spring 2002.
And so years passed and still no new GNR album, to the point where it became one joke too many. The album was long billedas
ChineseDemocracy, andoccasionally session recordings would leak and make their way onto Internet file-sharingnetworks. A fascinating
articlewritten by Jeff Leeds for The NewYork Times, published in March 2005, revealed how tangledand costly the making of the album
hadbecome. According to the article, titled "The MostExpensive Album Never Released,"Rose began work on the album in 1994 and racked
upproduction costs of at least $13 million dollars. Producersinvolved withthe album at one time or another included Mike Clink, Youth,
SeanBeavan, and even Roy Thomas Baker. (Curiously, Mobyclaimed to havebeen offered the job as well.) Marco Beltrami and Paul
Buckmasterwere allegedly brought in for orchestralarrangements, and there was a revolving doorof guitarists. In 2006, the album seemed
closer torelease, as Rose begansurfacing in public and even took his band on the road for some shows. Themusic industry's biggest
boondoggle finallyborefruit in 2008 when Axl unveiled a record that was well over a decade in the making. While ChineseDemocracy received
manyravereviews, and the critical response was positive overall, the record underperformed (its almost impossible)expectations,debuting at
numberthree on the Billboard 200 when it came out in November. A worldwide tour followed. « hide |
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